


the weather that I'm under

by Haeronwen



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 03:44:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6407371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haeronwen/pseuds/Haeronwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur has a bad day.  It gets better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the weather that I'm under

As Mondays go, it’s not exactly clockwork.  Arthur wakes with a headache, sets his oversensitive smoke alarm off making toast, and leaves both cufflinks and the carefully crafted portfolio for this morning’s meeting on top of his dresser.  He spends the commute feverishly recreating the salient points on his phone and then emailing them to Ariadne marked urgent in the hope that she’ll take pity on him, all the while crammed between someone in sweaty gym gear and a kid listening to Rihanna _unnecessarily loudly_.

He gets in four minutes early, but flushed and anxious and with the line _it’s getting hot / crack a window, air it out_ playing on a loop in his head.  “You look,” Ariadne says, when she stops by with the printouts, and then seems to think better of it—“lovely.  You look _lovely_.”

“I don’t have any cufflinks,” Arthur says, miserably.

“No one will notice your cufflinks, Arthur.”

“ _I’d_ notice.”

“Well,” says Ariadne, “then it’s a good job there’s only one of you.”

He’s so engrossed going through his notes for the meeting that several minutes pass before he realises Ariadne is still hovering.  “You’re relieved of your duties,” he assures her, making a valiant effort to look less like someone on the verge of drowning himself in a soy cappuccino.  “I promise not to have a meltdown.”

She shakes her head minutely.  “Dom’s micromanaging again,” she says.  “The first person he comes across from Marketing is going to spend the morning explaining to him why this new system he wants to implement in the name of efficiency is going to set the department back weeks, and then be blamed for _his_ failure to understand the problem.”

Arthur scrawls _switch Dom to decaf_ on a post-it and sticks it to his keyboard.  “My box-room poorly disguised as an office is your box-room poorly disguised as an office,” he says.

“Much appreciated.”

-

The meeting doesn’t go terribly, but it doesn’t go perfectly, either, which means that Arthur is now doomed to relive the moment that he dipped his sleeve in Miles’s coffee and _decided not to acknowledge it_ every time he sees him.  Which if Arthur’s luck holds will be five days a week for _the rest of their lives_.

He ploughs through some emails and takes his lunch at two so that Dom can’t make him go to Supernatural again (Arthur likes his food with texture). By the time he gets to Pret, of course, there’s an empty shelf where the chicken salads used to be, so in a mild fit of pique Arthur buys three sausage rolls and two brownies, and eats one right there while he’s waiting for his cappuccino.

On his way back to the office, his mother calls—purportedly to discuss his dad’s sixtieth, but mostly, Arthur thinks, to complain about the ongoing border dispute with Erica and Pam next door, whose koi pond extends a full five inches into their yard.  He hangs up twenty minutes later to find his coffee’s gone cold.

It’s also not soy.

-

He stays an extra half an hour or so to finish some things up, ensure he’s not playing catch up tomorrow, and then gives it up as a bad job.  It’s raining when he leaves—the kind of rain that’s so fine it renders umbrellas useless, soaks through Arthur’s coat and pants and the collar of his shirt in the time it takes him to walk to the tube.

His hands and face are numb by the time he gets home, limbs heavy with that bone-deep cold that’s impossible to shake.  He doesn’t bother drying off—just peels off his clothes and leaves them in a pile on the floor, which is a testament to his mental state, really, and goes to sit in the shower.

An hour later and considerably warmer, Arthur stands in front of the entire contents of his kitchen and tries to decide what to make out of brown rice, peach yoghurt and a dubious avocado.  He pours himself a generous glass of wine.

It is at this point that there’s a knock at the door.

Arthur freezes.  The instinct is deep-rooted.  He’s had a long day, and all he really wants to do is curl up under the monstrosity of a fuzzy pink blanket his grandma knitted him last Christmas and watch _Location, Location, Location_ and wonder where Kirstie even finds coats with buttons that big or whether she and Phil will ever realise that they’re meant to be.  The prospect of further social interaction, however brief, is not appealing.

It’s not like he was expecting anyone.

The silence stretches on.  Arthur listens for the sound of fading footsteps, and then jumps when someone knocks again.  He hesitates, then pads silently over to check the peephole.

There’s a guy standing in the hall with his arms wrapped around a white paper bag.  There are tattoos curling up over his collarbone and around his shoulders, and when he shifts the package in his arms to knock again Arthur catches a glimpse of a red Wagamama logo.

Arthur looks back at the peach yoghurt.

He opens the door.

-

“Hello,” says the man with the takeout bag.  “Terribly sorry to disturb you, but I’ve been sent the wrong order.”

“Oh,” says Arthur, a little nonplussed.  Not a delivery man, then.  Also considerably more attractive than Arthur had anticipated—the peephole does no one any favours, and now that the door’s open the guy’s smiling at him dazzlingly.  His teeth are appallingly crooked.  His eyes are strikingly blue.  Looking at him straight on is like looking into a very bright light.

“They’re sending me a replacement,” the man continues, when it becomes clear Arthur isn’t going to contribute anything further, “but in the meantime I’m stuck with this one.  Ordinarily I’d have no qualms about eating both, but I’m veggie and this one isn’t, so I thought—since we’re neighbours and all—I’d ask whether you like Japanese food.  Seems a waste to throw it out.”

“Neighbours,” Arthur repeats.  It’s been a _really_ long day.

“3B,” the man says, and, “Eames.”  He holds out his hand.  “Nice to meet you.”

“Arthur,” says Arthur, and shakes it.

“So, do you?”

“Do I—?”

“Like Japanese food?”

Arthur says, “I do, yeah.”  He doesn’t say that he once ate fifteen gyoza in one sitting (less is more, he thinks).

“Wonderful,” says Eames, and brushes past into the apartment.  Arthur steps aside to let him, mostly because he’s not sure what else to do.  “I’ll just pop this on the counter for you, shall I?”

Arthur follows Eames from 3B into his kitchen, where Eames puts the food down next to the avocado and then lingers.  “I’ve a confession to make,” Eames says, fingers toying with the edge of the bag like he’s preparing to set the various dishes out for him, and Arthur’s confused, he really is, because in his admittedly limited experience people in London do not bring their neighbours food, apropos of nothing.  This is not a small town.  The anonymity’s half the draw.  “I’ve seen you around.”

The anonymity thing was oversold, apparently.  “Around?”

“The building,” says Eames.  “The street.  The gym.”

“You go to my gym?”

“We were bound to meet eventually,” Eames continues.  “I thought this would be a good opportunity.”

And, yeah, okay, _now_ he’s getting the food out of the bag, putting the containers on the counter, removing lids.  Probably Arthur should be the one doing that, but he’s busy processing right now.

To be perfectly honest, Arthur’s not sure how this sort of interaction is supposed to go.  He lacks points of reference.  There were no kids his age nearby when he was growing up, and since his parents are currently engaged in a highly passive-aggressive dispute with the elderly couple who brought them cookies at Christmas he probably shouldn’t be following their example.

It occurs to Arthur, a little late, that he’s wearing his Batman t-shirt and ratty old sweatpants—and clutching his wine, because at this point it’s basically a security blanket.  His hair is still damp from the shower. 

 “Can I get you a drink?” he asks.

-

“So why London?”

Eames is on the couch, making himself at home—drinking a glass of wine and flipping through stations in search of something to watch.  Arthur is digging out plates and utensils he rarely uses.  “What do you mean?”

“Why did you decide to move to London?”

Arthur shrugs.  “The company I work for was expanding, and they offered me a job here.”

“Do you know people here?” Eames asks.

“Sure.”  Arthur has friends.  At work he has Ariadne, and Dom when Dom isn’t on one of his efficiency drives.  Sometimes Mal and Dom invite him over on weekends, and Mal makes him go through bridal magazines with her while the dinner’s burning.

“ _Did_ you know people here?”

“Not at the time.”

“That’s a big move,” Eames says, and Arthur thinks about how small his worldly possessions looked once they were packed away in boxes.  “That’s—.”

“Reckless,” Arthur agrees.

“Brave,” says Eames, and sounds like he means it.  “I’ve never lived anywhere but here.”

Arthur doesn’t really know what to do with that, so he eats a dumpling.

“You took a chance.  You’re someone who takes chances.”

Arthur looks at Eames and says, with slight surprise, “Yeah.  I guess I am.”

“Ooh,” says Eames.  “ _Location, Location, Location._ ”

-

Halfway through the second episode of _Grand Designs_ Arthur says, “They’re going to run over.  No way that planning permission’s coming through in time.”

"So pessimistic.”

Arthur says, “You’d be in the caravan over Christmas,” with a certainty and a softness that he can’t explain.

“Indubitably,” Eames agrees.  His socked foot nudges Arthur’s underneath the pink fuzzy blanket.  “Pass the teriyaki beef?”

“The _vegetarian_ teriyaki beef?”

“Would you look at that,” says Eames.  “I’m cured.”

**Author's Note:**

> For important reference purposes: [the Grand Designs drinking game](http://carina.org.uk/granddesigns.shtml).


End file.
